Communications in computer systems can occur by many different means such as different communication protocols. For example, some systems are arranged such that communications between a processor and a chipset component occur via a front side bus (FSB) according to an FSB communication protocol. Other components of the system, such as peripheral devices coupled downstream to the chipset component may communicate with the chipset component via a different protocol, such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) communication protocol, e.g., a multi-drop PCI communication protocol or by point-to-point (PtP) interconnects according to a PCI-Express™ communication protocol in accordance with the PCI-Express™ Base Specification version 2.0 (published Dec. 20, 2006) (hereafter the PCIe™ Specification).
Additional communication protocols are being adopted in systems to enable routing of both cache coherent communications and non-cache coherent communications. Typically, such systems include communication paths or links that operate according to multiple communication protocols, as detailed above. As such, there is the need for translations or conversions of certain transactions from one protocol to another, increasing latency of operations.